Shelter
by rubia1516
Summary: Bella Swan wakes alone with a baby,bruises,and no memory whatsoever.When she arrives at shelter valley, running from something,but not knowing what,she falls in love with Edward Cullen, the sheriff. MUCH BETTER THAN IT SOUNDS I PROMISE-ALL HUMAN.
1. Chapter 1

**HEY GUYS THIS IS MY FIRST CHAPTER OF A NEW STORY SO PLZZZZZ BE NICE LOL I LIEK CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM SO PLEASE LEND SOME!!!! THESE CHARACTER'S NAMES BELONG TO STEPHANIE MEYER AND THE GIST BELONGS TO TARA QUINN BUT THE REST IS ALL ME BABY LOL PLZ ENJOY**

**Chapter 1- The Webs We Weave**

**BELLA'S POV:**

_Bang! Bang! Bang! _The searing throb behind my eyes forced me to consciousness. I tried to open my eyes, and failed, the light was too bright, the pain too much. I let out a small sigh and decided to just sink back into darkness where it didn't hurt quite so bad…

"Mama," a little voice cried, the tears obvious in his tone. At this I couldn't help myself, the pain didn't matter anymore; something more important made my eyes fly open. Some instinct, I guess.

The first thing I saw was an off white ceiling, my head pounded horribly and I winced, closing my eyes against the pain.

"Mama" I jumped slightly, and sat up, then regretted it, coming close to passing out again. The baby's cry stopped me from falling back down onto the bed. The baby started to cry, and my heart ached—I forced my eyes back open. Absently, I noticed that one wouldn't open all the way…swollen shut. How had it gotten like that? I took in a small dirty crib that was almost the same color as the ceiling. In it was a little boy in overalls; his tiny, precious face screwed up with his weeping. My heart pounded in my chest, and before I knew it I was rushing over to his crib, and scooping him up.

"It's ok baby, shhh," I clutched him close to me and he cried into my collar bone. "I'm here, its ok now—" I stopped with my mouth wide open realizing I don't know his name. I choked on my next words, not knowing if they were true... "Mama's here now." _Am I his mama? _ He called me it, but was it true? I bobbed him and rocked him until he calmed, and I felt his breath steady and slow into sleep. I cradled him so that his face was looking up at me, he was quiet and angelic, his little eyes closed. He clenched his little fists close to his chest, he seemed like he was around one, or two. I glanced at his hair, a sort of soft amber, then down at mine, the same exact color. His skin was the same color as mine too, but without a mirror, I couldn't surmise anymore. I realized, with a jolt, that I had no idea who I was…

**EDWARD'S POV:**

"Fuck you Edward. Ok? FUCK you." I'd never seen Victoria's face look so ugly. Her lovely features didn't look so beautiful when they were twisted in her anger and hate. It was more than scary when it was directed at me.

"Look Vick, I'm sorry but-" she let out a shriek and started gathering her clothing that she'd torn off with the viciousness of an animal.

"DO NOT call me that. You know what you are? You're a manipulator. That's what."

"Victoria, I never tried to lead you on!" I raised my voice a little and zipped my jeans, struggling with my belt buckle. "You're beautiful and very sexy but this is just a terrible time in my life to start a relationship. I'm sorry." She shot me a look that made me cringe and threw open the bathroom door.

"Fuck you." She said finally, and slammed the door. I threw my hands up and sighed. The truth was that I knew Victoria didn't want a relationship. She wanted a fuck, and that was that. But what I'd told her was true. After being elected Sheriff so recently I couldn't really be sleeping around. Plus, the death of my father had been so recent, it seemed. I was still obsessed with revenge. When she'd grabbed my hand flirtatiously and led me to the bathroom saying that she had to tell me something very important, I'd known this was how it would end. But I hadn't imagined even Victoria could be so hateful.

It took all I had to deny her though…ever since Jane broke up with me I'd been completely sexually inactive. I'd really had no time for it, with the new job, before that, my father's illness, and now I was a little afraid to have my heart broken again. Still, that was 2 years ago. I sighed, and glanced down.

"Fuck _me_," I groaned. _No wonder she'd been… encouraged. _I turned to the sink and splashed some cold water on my face, then leaned against the sink to wait until I…calmed down.

**BELLA'S POV:**

"Hi," I said to the slightly-older-than-a-teenager waiting at the front desk. My voice sounded tiny and afraid, and he stared at me with a worried look, taking in my heavily bruised face. I'd put on long sleeves for the trip downstairs to get some answers; if he could see how bruised the rest of me was, he would probably call the cops.

"Ma'am can I call….someone for you?" He said awkwardly, "Maybe a hospital?" I tried my best to smile bashfully.

"I know I must look like a mess," I giggled lightly, touching my face with my finger tips, trying not to flinch, "but I've already been to the hospital," I lied, "I fell off my horse and got a little damaged, as you can see." I laughed again. He seemed to relax a little at my bubbly attitude and plausible (to him) story.

"I'm sorry to hear that." He said, smiling, "How can I help you today?" _That was easy, _I thought, and put my hands on the desk, leaning forward like I was planning to tell him a secret.

"When I checked in, I was a tiny bit tipsy," I confided, "You know, from the pain-killers. Well anyway, I was wondering if you could tell me what name I signed in under?" I asked, "To tell which card I should pay with." I added, at his confused expression. "Room 243A."

"Um," he typed a little at his computer, and clicked his mouse, "It says here that you signed in as a Bella Swan." Something in my still throbbing lightly brain _zinged! _And I sensed that the information was true.

"Oh thank you soso much," I grinned, feeling an open cut on my lip stretch, and winced. "I'll be back to check out. Thank you, again." I swallowed at his concerned expression, and walked away.

So far, I didn't remember much; I'd been keeping a list of things in a notebook I'd found in a drawer. A list of things I would remember, either while I was taking care of the baby or sleeping or straightening the little room. Not a very long list so far; mainly just facts I noticed over the past week, like that I had my fingernails and toenails painted the same color, perfectly.

I'd found a black gym bag with a few diapers, bottles, clothes for me and the baby, and $2,000. I still had no real memory about who I was, and what had happened to me, but I'd gathered from what I'd found that I was on the run. I'd also figured out that I was in a little motel in Snowflake, Arizona from a little sign on the back of the door that read _Thank you for visiting Snowflake, Arizona! The Saw Inn thanks you for your business, come back again!_

I closed the door behind me quietly, and leaned over the edge of the crib to check on Ryan. The baby didn't say much, but he had bad dreams often, which made me think he remembered what had happened. Made me think he was afraid of what hunted us.

The few things he did say gave me hope; like calling me mama. Though I'd figured out that I was on the run, I still couldn't figure out if I was on the run from the law, or if I was running from _someone. _Based on my bruises and wounds, it was someone, but how could I know for sure? What if I'd kidnapped this little boy, what if he only called me mama because he couldn't say anything else? My conscience tortured me relentlessly.

Another thing I'd learned from the baby's small vocabulary was his name. He called himself Ryan. A name I'd always liked. I smiled to myself, stroking his soft amber curls, knowing I'd named my baby after my father. I gasped, and darted to the drawer of the dresser to grab my notebook.

_Father's name is Ryan. _

_Always liked that name. _

_Bella Swan._ I added.

I closed the book and closed my eyes tightly, trying to think of something else. Trying to reach the memory that seemed just on the brink of being revealed…Nothing. I sighed, and set the notebook back down, ready to grab it if something came to me.

Something that continuously haunted me was the thought that I was running from something that could hurt me and Ryan. I had this desire to leave the hotel and keep running until we were safe. _But where? _I grabbed the only magazine in the room; it had been left in the top drawer of the dresser by some prior tenant. I lied down on the bed and felt a jolt as I looked at the cover. Looking up at me was a woman looking as happy and content as I longed to feel.

_**Battered Spouse Finds Safety At Last pg. 34**_

I flipped hurriedly to her story and read hungrily; it told how she was married to a man who beat her within an inch of her life, and she finally got the nerve to run away. Now she was living in a small town called Shelter Valley, and her ex-husband was in jail, and was going to be there for another 10 years.

I closed the magazine with wide eyes. _Shelter Valley. That's where I need to go. _

**Aro's POV:**

"She can't have gotten far." I could feel myself getting agrier, and i took a few deep breaths, steadying my heart-rate. "How could you let her get away _again_?"

"She's well trained." Calvin said in a low, scared voice, "I hit her repeatedly, and she didn't go down. She was bleeding badly, but she kicked me in the head, and i passed out." i glanced at him, and noticed his numerous wounds.

"She's a woman."

"A woman defending her child. She's strong, Aro." I looked at him, and he cringed. I wondered what my face must look like to elicit that kind of reaction.

"You will find her, and you will kill her. Bella cannot let what's going on here leak to the world. All will be ruined if she does. We're strong, but we're not strong enough. We need more followers."

"I will find her, and i will kill her." His voice rang with sincerity.

"Very good."I turned back to watch the man on the table be injected, and smiled. Another soldier for our troops. Another soldier fighting for our worthy cause.


	2. Chapter 2

**6 Months Later…**

**Edward's POV:**

As I reached the sight of the accident, I grabbed my simple black Aviators and put them on. The sun was still incredibly bright for the time of day, and I wanted to be able to see everything clearly so that I could asses it to the best of my ability.

I got out and stood by my truck for a few minutes, scanning the land in between the scene and the mountains in the distance. My well-trained eyes saw nothing but the lovely, simple desert landscape that lay before me. No glint of metal in the brush that was the main vegetation here. No sign at all of the Chevy Impala.

"Edward," Emmett called, and I glanced over at him. I slammed the truck's door and made my way to where he was standing next to the victim who was sitting on the bumper of the ambulance, wrapped in a heavy blanket, despite the intense heat.

"It's Renee, right?" I asked her in my best soothing voice. She looked up at me with wide, exhausted, scared eyes, and I hated the people who had done this to her, because I knew it would scar her for life. Not physically, but mentally. She nodded in response to my question. "I know you've been questioned a lot, and I know the story so I won't bother you too much more, but are you sure you don't remember anything else? Anything at all… even the smallest detail could make our case easier to solve."

The young woman had been rammed off the road by a pair of assailants, who had attacked with such swiftness that she hadn't even gotten a look at the car that hit her. Once forcing her car into a stop, they had high jacked the brand new Impala, and thrown her in the back seat after hitting her until she was unconscious. When she'd come to they were still driving, and she had thrown herself out of the car, choosing to take her chances with that rather than find out what her abductors had in store for her. Being a dancer, she had known how to roll with the fall, and came out mostly unscathed. If she'd been driving a crappy old car, she probably would have been fine.

"I'm sorry I really don't remember anything…." The girl said, starting to shake. I nodded in understanding. She was in shock. The paramedic sitting on one of the stretchers in the ambulance shook his head when I glanced at him after she'd lapsed into silence. The gesture meant she'd refused medical attention.

"Renee are you sure you don't want one of our paramedics to look at you before your parents get you?" I asked her. She shook her head vehemently, and I held my hands, palms up, in mock surrender.

"Ok. But take my card and call me if you think of anything, alright?" I handed it to her, "Or if you need me for anything else." She nodded to me, and I gestured to Emmett to follow me as the paramedic took my place at her side, and handed her a water bottle. Besides some therapy, and a few mean bruises, she would be fine.

"What do you think?" He asked, following me to my truck. Emmett was the best, and most trusted, officer I had. He'd been good friends with my father before he passed away, and I trusted my life with the man on a daily basis.

"Well this is the third attack in three months, so they're getting gutsy. They haven't shown this much action since that summer ten years ago." Emmett casted his eyes down, knowing that I was starting to linger on the past from the look on my face.

"Edward…you can't-"

"I'm not making it personal." I cut him off. "Just because these are probably the same guys who killed my dad doesn't mean I'm making it a vengeance thing. Trust me." Emmett rolled his eyes, and started thumbing through the report again, sighing in reluctant submission.

"No accents, no ethnicity, no specific tattoos or scars… we have barely anything to go on." He raised his brows. "They didn't talk to her, either. Basically all we've got is that they were two younger guys in t-shirts."

"This might be our last chance, Emmett." I clapped a hand on his shoulder, "Have some faith! Please make a copy of that for me and have it on my desk for tomorrow." I called over my shoulder as I started back to the truck. As I sat down, my radio went off telling me that there was a warrant out for the arrest of Matthew Taylor, a guy I'd gone to high school with who, to my knowledge, hadn't been in town in a few years. But since he still had his parents' road as his official home address, I had to go check it out.

**Bella's POV: **

"I only wish that you could seeeeeee the way you love me. Ohhhh the way you love me." I sang loudly as I finished wiping down the tile in the kitchen, and reached for my duster to get the tough spots in between the light fixtures on the ceiling. I'd re-started my life while I was waiting for my memory to come back to me. I wasn't about to just sit around and wait for it; I didn't have the time, money, or inclination. Instead, I'd taken the money I had and paid the hotel, bought a car from a sweet old man who basically gave it to me, and made a life living in a duplex, paying for my son and I by starting a cleaning business in Shelter Valley.

The song on the radio switched, and I grinned as I recognized the beginning notes of Luke Bryan's _Rain Is A Good Thing. _

"My daddy spent his life lookin' up at the sky!" I belted out, "He cussed, kicked the dust, sayin' son it's way too dry." The doorbell rang, and I stopped short, frowning. _Who could that be?_ Even though it wasn't my house, I went to open the door, not wanting to disappoint the old couple by missing a package being dropped off or something. My heart sunk, and I felt my face grow pale as I opened the door, and an officer stood there, looking official and stern.

"Who are you?" He said, looking a little surprised. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding, realizing that he wasn't looking for me, but the people that lived there. My relief turned into embarrassment as I watched his eyes trail up and down my body, taking in my extremely short shorts, and wifebeater tank top that I'd picked up at a Goodwill. Normally I would have been wearing something a little more appropriate, but the people I was cleaning for weren't home that day, and in the extreme heat, combined with the exertion of cleaning, I often got too hot in my normal work clothes.

"Bella Swan." I said. Feeling indignant at his blatant scan of my physique, I crossed my arms over my chest. "And who are you?" One eyebrow arched at my flippant question, and he widened his stance.

"Sheriff Edward Cullen. What are you doing in the Taylor's house, Mrs. Swan?"

"It's _miss _Swan." Still a little peeved at his roaming eyes, and not at all happy that he was insinuating that maybe I shouldn't be there, I wasn't exactly ready to be sweet with him yet. I figured he couldn't arrest me for being bratty. I lifted the feather duster, "And cleaning, obviously. I work around town cleaning houses. Look, the Taylors are away for the day on a trip to the city to go for a nice dinner and shop around. What is this all about?"

"Miss?" He asked, and the question threw me off.

"What?"

"You aren't married?" I cocked my head.

"No…?" He seemed to realize what he'd just asked me, and got back to business.

"I'm sorry I can't share that information with you. Just please don't let the Taylors know I stopped by, it's protocol. I'll come by tomorrow and try to catch them."

"That's fine, I won't be seeing them anyway. I just lock up here and leave the key under the mat…If that's all, officer?" I went to shut the door, but he caught it with one hand.

"I've heard about you, but I had yet to meet you. My sister Alice, she runs the daycare, she said you bring your son in sometimes to play with the other kids?"

"That's right." I said shortly. It made me uncomfortable, this man who I'd never met before knowing so much about me, and talking about my child.

"If you're not married, how do u have a child?" My cheeks burned.

"If you must know, I'm a widow. My husband died right after my son was born." It was the lie that I'd been telling people all over town, and so far it had sufficed.

"Oh," his head dropped in embarrassment, "I'm sorry to have pried, I'll let you get back to your work now." I went to close the door again, but again he caught it. I sighed, ready for this conversation to be over.

"_Yes _officer?"

"Will you have dinner with me tonight?" I blinked, taken aback by the unexpected offer. _Hell no. _I thought. _You and a cop? That's rich. You, who might be on the run from the law, going on a date with a cop. HA!_ His outrageously green eyes sparkled with genuine hope. A lock of the brunette hair with natural reddish highlights fell in his eyes and he shook it away, almost impatiently. _He is damn cute, though. _

"No." I said abruptly, and took the moment of shock to pull the door from his hand before he could stop me again. "Good day officer!" I closed the door, and leaned against it, waiting to hear the sounds of him leaving. About a half minute later, I heard his boots crunching on the gravel, and the sound of his truck's engine as it roared to life.

The Taylors' tabby sat on the freshly cleaned counter, having just watched the whole scene.

"How weird was that, huh?" I asked him as I walked back over. I wiggled the feather duster in front of his face, and he lazily lifted a paw to swat at it halfheartedly. I laughed lightly, and went back to cleaning, humming to the Carrie Underwood tune that had come on; a vision of that stray bit of hair contrasting with the green eyes fresh in my mind.


End file.
